Independent Publisher Online has made St. Peter’s Monsters a highlighted title.
This means IPO recognizes it as one of the best of the books received and reviewed by its editorial staff.
These books are honored each month for exhibiting superior levels of creativity, originality, and high standards of design and production quality.
“The book is wonderful!!! I started it Saturday night when I got home and was hooked. I should have been packing on Sunday but kept picking up the book instead!” – J.R.
“I have been reading non-stop (as much as possible with work and stuff to do.) I loved the story and was taken on a great ride trying to see if the characters were going to end up where I wanted them. . . The first pages just jumped at me mostly because you have not used the usual adjectives, the well worn metaphors! I found the poet in you. I fell in love with the words themselves …..NOT simply the great twisted story! I am in love with words. I love the way phrases sing and move, roll over and can turn belly up showing a fresh and new image. “By October, oaks and maples had erupted into gaudy harvest colors.” p.10 Ahhhhhhhh, nice, very nice. Using “gaudy” allows me to go further with the suggestion…..most would just tell the colors trapping me into a fixed color position. So, write on good woman! Now I shall start looking for your poetry. Thank you for such a wonderful story in which you so carefully created deeper individuals who had a chance to find Grace.” – L.S.
Recently a writer I know remarked on his deep disappointment that so few people had shown up for one of his readings. He said he felt “pathetic” and mentioned low book sales.
I advised him to treat three attendees the same as he would have treated 300 and it would still be rewarding.
He agreed that he always mustered genuine enthusiasm for the audience no matter the size, but admitted that he did not feel as gratified when there were fewer attendees.
I would argue that size doesn’t matter. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) I’ve spoken to standing-room only crowds and to an audience of one. Both were satisfying, but in different ways.
When I read to a room full of people, there’s an energy there that rouses the performer in me. It’s fun to read the different expressions on the faces in the crowd. They give me cues as to how to proceed. It’s large-scale interactivity.
On the other hand, when I’ve had only one person show up to a reading, I find myself connecting on a deeper level with that individual. It’s only happened to me twice, but both times I did the same thing. I came out from behind the podium, pulled up a chair to face the visitor, and gave the reading. Afterwards we sat and chatted: small-scale interactivity, but very meaningful.
On one of these occasions the attendee told me that I was very likeable. It tickled her to death that I sat down with her to read and talk.
While literary readings are great opportunities to sell books, I don’t look at them as serving just that purpose. To do so is to diminish the importance of the spoken word.
Yes, I want to sell books. However, I also want to enjoy the shared social literary experience.
The act of reading a book is one of isolation and interpretation. When I’m allowed to read to an audience – even an audience of one – I insert myself into someone else’s world temporarily. And, hopefully, I provide clarity to the story. I give it a voice.
Neva Bryan, author of St. Peter’s Monsters – a novel.
Thanks to Hal Hubener, director of Blue Ridge Regional Library, for inviting me to be on Cover To Cover, the library’s weekly TV program broadcast live on BTW Channel 21 (Comcast Cable), Collinsville. I had a great time and Hal was a wonderful interviewer. He really parsed the book. I was impressed!
“I loved the flow of your book. You jumped around in time so seamlessly. Congratulations on a job well done!” — C.O.
“I absolutely loved your book and I read at least four novels a week!” — G.F.
“A great read. Peter and Wren had my heart from the beginning.” — V.H.
“I am becoming so absorbed in your book. I’m loving it!” — A.P.
“The book was very good. It read well.” — B.D.
“It was wonderful! I couldn’t put it down.” — D.C.
“Your book was great . . . waiting for the next one.” — S.B.
“You plot well. I was interested in the events of the story, and I knew, after I had read several pages, that you would keep me interested. I cared about the characters and wanted good things to happen to them.” — C.S.
“St. Peter’s Monsters is a very well written, very captivating and enjoyable book, and one of the very few books that I plan to reread. I have loaned it to three friends who all agree.” — D.B.
“The book was so well written! You are an excellent author and I hope you will continue to write and write and write some more.” — C.R.
“I thought the story was fantastic, cleverly presented, especially the way the chapters transitioned, and wonderfully written. I couldn’t put it down for more than a few minutes.” — C.M.
“It’s one of the best novels I’ve read that uses this area as the frame around the story. You captured the beauty of . . . Southwest Virginia in a love story filled with twists and turns, and an ending that, like a fine dessert, left the reader satisfied. Good work.” — M.A.
“It was a delight to read this book. The characters are well-defined. I hope [other readers] enjoy this book as much as I did.” — P.B.
“I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and I did not want it to end. Keep up the good writing, and I can’t wait until your next book will be published. Keep writing!!” — P.L.
“It is awesome; it was hard to put down. You are a very gifted author. I love to read and I will be looking forward to your next novel.” — C.R.
“I let a few of my friends read my copy and they are all CRAZY about it!! They loved it and wanted their own copy and some even said they wanted to order one for family/friends.” — K.G.
“I enjoyed your book very much. I worked faster because I could hardly wait to get back to Peter and Wren.” — M.B.
St. Peter’s Monsters is available at these fine booksellers and retail stores: Joseph Beth, Lexington, KY; Family Drug, Lebanon, VA; Coffee Buy the Book, Pulaski, VA; Wise County Historical Society, Wise, VA; Zazzy’Z, Abingdon, VA; Coffee Depot, Christiansburg, VA; Binding Time Cafe, Martinsville, VA; Kraftin’ Korner, Lebanon, VA; Appalachian Arts Center, Wardell, VA; and Tales of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore, Big Stone Gap, VA.
It is available on-line at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, Powell’s Books, and Target, as well as in some stores in the chains. It is available through nevabryan.com.
You may order a signed copy via snailmail. Send $14.00 (plus .70 tax if in VA) plus $3.99 for shipping and handling to: Brighid Editions, PO Box 1428, Saint Paul, VA 24283.
Books are always available during the author’s appearances. See her calendar for an event near you.
Publication Date: February 2009
Price: $14.00
Length: 294 pages
Cover Style: 6″X9″ Color Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-615-26391-5
LCCN: 2008910946
St. Peter’s Monsters is the story of Peter Sullivan, a homesick college student teetering on the edge of alcoholism. He discovers bigger monsters than the bottle when a mysterious young woman enters his life. Wren has fled Peter’s beloved Appalachian hills and now he must find out why she is keeping secrets about her past.
As they turn to each other for comfort, they are linked together in a chain of love, tragedy, and murder . . . a chain that binds them when they find themselves back in the haunted shadows of the Virginia coalfields.
Saturday, July 4, 11 AM – 2 PM:
I’ll be signing books at Coffee Buy the Book in Pulaski, Virginia.
I’m excited to have my work appear in the book anthology We All Live Downstream alongside work by:
• Earl Hamner (creator of the Waltons)
• Ashley Judd
• Robert Kennedy Jr.
• Wendell Berry
• Bobbie Ann Mason
• Ann Pancake
• Jean Ritchie
• Silas House
• Hal Crowther
• Jeff Biggers
• Denise Giardina
• Pamela Duncan
• Many other fine writers and performers.
We All Live Downstream is a multi-genre anthology of noted authors and young writers speaking out against mountaintop removal coal mining. There is the fifth-grader who vows to fight the destruction until he’s “laid in the ground,” the college student who recalls her shock and heartbreak at first seeing a mountaintop removal site, the best-selling novelist who believes that “to destroy mountains is to spit in the face of God.” This startling collection includes writers from 17 states and features material from celebrated artists and activists such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Wendell Berry, Earl Hamner, Ashley Judd, Silas House, Denise Giardina, Erik Reece, Bobbie Ann Mason, Bob Edwards, Penny Loeb, Hal Crowther, Jean Ritchie, Terry Tempest Williams, Jeff Biggers, Ann Pancake, George Ella Lyon, Ben Sollee and many more. Edited by journalist & activist Jason Howard (coauthor of Something’s Rising), this book presents a rallying chorus of dissent against a reckless industry and drives home the point that energy (particularly domestic coal) is everyone’s issue … not only at the source but all the way “downstream.”
